Wednesday, February 26, 2014

These are the elevators in the P2 parking level of my building. As you can see the flooring has a repeating pattern of "granite-carpet-granite-carpet".

The other day I came into the building to hear the elevator ding and so I began to run so that I could catch it. I came around that corner and my boots must still have been a little bit wet from the snow and so I SLIPPED! on the granite, but caught myself on the carpet before I fell down and also before the attractive business-y type man who was getting onto the elevator saw me. I slowed my pace but still briskly walked toward the elevator so he wouldn't have to wait long.

And then I SLIPPED! again on the next set of granite. This time I let out a loud "WHOOP!" and now the attracitve business-y type man saw everything and I still didn't fall down but it was a whole body slip and a loud "WHOOP!" so naturally I was very embarrassed.

And so.

I spent the entire 10-floor ride up the elevator explaining loudly and out-of-breath-style that I had "ALREADY SLIPPED BUT YOU DIDN'T SEE ME AAHAHAHAHAHA I THOUGHT I GOT AWAY WITH IT AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA AND THEN I SLIPPED AGAIN!!! HAHA!!!!! AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA"

Sunday, February 23, 2014

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on November 14, 2012.

So my dad rolled his truck while running an errand before taking my mom to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester to have her lung cancer removed. No joke. Here's the photographic evidence:

Not my dad.

Apparently somebody slid through a stop sign on the icy, icy roads and my dad hit them. Both vehicles went into opposite ditches. My dad's truck rolled over, the airbag deployed, and he had to cut himself out of the seatbelt and escape the flaming, exploding* wreckage. As pictured above, the trailer landed in a foot of water; the truck miraculously did not.

The funny thing is that after my dad landed upside-down in the ditch and oriented his disoriented self and then cut himself from the seatbelt by which he was hanging, and then escaped the flaming, exploding* wreckage by wedging the door open, which took several minutes as you can imagine (and BTW my dad is severely claustrophobic and being trapped like that is like his WORST fear), he rushed to the aid of the people in the other vehicle. He found them completely unharmed, upright and gabbing away on their cell phones, obviously completely uninterested in the other car or its driver.

Friday, February 21, 2014

On November 23rd, I was feeling nostalgic for those times as a kid when we'd make plants out of other plants! or seeds! and sometimes there were milk cartons! and so I stuck some toothpicks into an avocado pit, and hovered it over some water in a jar (we haven't talked about me and my jars yet. Oh well, that's another story) and dreamed of the crack and sprout that would happen in six short weeks if I could just be patient. PATIENT! It was gonna be so worth it. I set up the little pit in the sunniest place in my apartment and changed the water religiously. I sang to it. (I mean, I didn't really sing "to it" but I'm constantly singing so it should have heard me, you know?) I hired a housesitter to take care of it while I was on my vacation. I'm not kidding.

Well, yesterday, after almost three months of this crap I realized I'm never going to be happy and that all dreams are futile and what's the point of living anyway and then I deep-sixed the whole thing.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

When we were just young teenage girls, Kasey, Shanna, Tara and I made a copy of an old favorite Gilda Radner SNL commercial, "Jewess Jeans".

Sorry for the poor quality. This was recorded on VHS in 1992, then with an iPhone.

I'm kind of embarrassed (no, not by the fact that I was rubbing my butt and pulling my pants up high, high, high) but because this video has 5,573 views on Youtube. It's hard to find the original commercial and people are probably sorely disappointed when they find ours.

Monday, February 17, 2014

The other day I was on my way to meet some friends for happy hour after work. While driving down the freeway, I noticed a gigantic beautiful SUV and the only reason I noticed it at all was because it was the only car on the road that had recently been washed. If you live north of the Mason-Dixon line during January you'll know what I mean - but those of you that don't, most cars look like this:

Anyway, this SUV was clean as a whistle! I accidentally noticed that it's driver was pretty cute too. As I passed it, I yawned. I felt like he was staying right next to me, not letting me fully pass him on purpose and so I looked over. The attractive (bald, but bald-on-purpose-good-looking-Bic-razor-shaved-before-actually-going-bald-bald) business-y man was looking at me! He was trying to get my attention! The exchange went something like this (I tried my best to help you to determine which character I was playing by using some gender-stereotypical props. And a dinner plate for a steering wheel, obviously):

I got nervous and tried to speed up and get away from him a couple of times but he kept on pulling up next to me making the "let's get a drink" motion and "can I call you?" motion and I must say we played quite an adorable game of cat-and-mouse down the freeway but it sort of ended like this:

And then I finally took my exit. And let him and my future happiness and all those bald babies slip right through my fingers. I played it cool, real cool. Like I do.

Of course I was confused because nobody ever hits on me and especially not at 70mph. BUT I have to say I was more than a little flattered.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on May 16, 2012.

Last night I went on my first training ride with my MS150 team. We biked 25 miles! I met a new friend named Laura and we rode together and got to talking about how expensive it can be to get into biking and running. Suddenly you need all this gear. Take, for example, padded butt biking shorts. I'm one of the few that has the good sense to cover up that shame with my famous pajama pants, but I wear the padded butt shorts underneath. Anyway, mine are actually "tri shorts", which means I bought them for a triathlon I did a few years back and they aren't as maxi padded as bike shorts, to make drying easier. Think mini pad. I was telling her all of this, and how I refuse to pony up the $50+ it's going to take to get the extra maxi padded butt shorts.

At that EXACT moment in time, we crossed paths with a man who had no legs, and was laying down on one of those cool bikes that is powered by a hand crank. I guess I was staring at him in sheer awe and pride as I told her all about my butt padding, and at the moment of contact as we rode by this man, and I was looking right at him, I concluded my story by saying, and I quote:

"So, I guess now it's 'toughen up, old friend'", referring of course to my crotch.

I cringed when I realized what had just happened and how all this poor brave awesome athletic disabled man probably heard me say as we whizzed by each other was,

Saturday, February 15, 2014

I am very sorry to report that my seven-year-old niece Miyo has run away. It seems she just wasn't "right" for my sister Kasey and had to take her leave.

She left nothing behind, save for this note:

I'm relieved that she did it in such a dignified way. Not laying blame -- or taking any, for that matter. Rather, she just made it clear that it was time to part ways. No hard feelings.

I suppose it's for the best, really. I'm not sure how she'll manage in such cold weather, but, better not to think about it. I prefer to recall the happier moments, though I'm sure that with time we'll all forget her completely.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on November 11, 2011.

You may recall that about a year ago I met my Annie Wilkes. My number one fan, just like from the movie Misery. Well, the one, the only, the fabulous Blog fan Lisa* (names have not been changed) lives in Tucson, Arizona!

So when I heard that I would be working there for a water meter assignment, I contacted Lisa, who helped Summer and I secure the house we're renting. We arranged everything days before arriving, so we needed somebody in Tucson to receive the Fed-ex package with the keys, etc., and Lisa was our girl!

We were driving from Albuquerque, Summer had a paper due and we were late getting into town, so we didn't have any time to waste picking up the keys. Lisa understood and offered to meet us on the side of the freeway.

If I hadn't already met and fallen in love with her, if she weren't a friend of a very good friend of my sister's...it might have been a very strange and scary scene:

Blog stalker offers to help find housing

Blog stalker offers to receive keys to new apartment

Blog stalker in fact receives and has possession of keys to new apartment

Blog stalker offers to meet late at night on the side of the road next to a highway

Blog stalker distracts Blogger with praise for blog

Blog stalker stabs Blogger 37 times in chest and abdomen

Blog stalker leaves Blogger to bleed out on side of highway

Blog goes unupdated from that point on, leaving tens of other fans disappointed and confused

But that's not how it went. We met, we hugged, we laughed, we got Summer involved, we got the keys...and settled in to Oro Valley.

A few days later Lisa hooked us up with her good friend Roxanne* (names have not been changed) who graciously brought us to the Seguaro (pronounced Seh-wah-roh) National Monument just minutes from our town.

Those are saguaros. There are millions of them in this National Forest. Millions.

Roxanne is hilarious. She has a story of how she had told her husband that the reason she was putting on her nice underwear/bra combo was because she was going to the dermatologist. He was confused, because it was for an above-the-neck skin appointment. "And you have to undress for that?" "Yes," she said, "he has me completely undress and lay on the table and then he looks at the skin on my face. What? Is that weird?"

This is the only photo I have of her, as she prefers to be photographed from behind:

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Hal: "I don't think you should travel anymore. I was watching this movie and this guy's daughter was killed 25 years ago and they were pursuing her boyfriend as a suspect and it turns out it was her boyfriend's dad!"

Me: "Does this mean I got a boyfriend? I mean at least if my boyfriend's dad killed me that means I ended up getting a boyfriend!"

Friday, February 7, 2014

I have extremely dry skin and so I don't shower every day. OK - I don't like getting wet and so I don't shower every day. OK, OK! I am extremely lazy and so I don't shower every day. Truth be told, I get really irritated, yes annoyed when I get to a point when I better take a shower finally.

But look! Nerdy-cute scientists agree that I probably should continue as I am:

1:40 -- "Hot water softens the lipids and undermines natural oils...not only does it cause the skin to dry out but can allow a path for invading cells...showering can often ruin the healthy balance of your skin."

You say so what? That's gross. I say I'm doing it for YOU!

2:04 -- "Showering and bathing increases disbursement of skin bacteria into the air, this allows the spread of micro-colonies from your skin onto other people's..."

This is just like that time they said we shouldn't be using anti-bacterial soap and I was like, "DUH".

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Whenever I've been traveling in a location that has a western coast it has been an unspoken rule that at day's end, I'll position myself somewhere so that I can watch the sunset.

Nicole and I made our way to the beach almost nightly to walk for miles along the beaches of Costa Rica, sometimes speeding dangerously down the highway so that we wouldn't miss that last sliver of light. We learned to time it -- about an inch in the sky was ten minutes. In South Africa, they call it "sundowners" and most often Mineska and I would view it from blankets with wine at Llandudno Beach. When my friends and I visited Sarah in San Diego we made a fire at Oceanside and illegally drank wine from coffee mugs. In Hawaii, every night without exception I and my friends made a plan as to where we would be watching the sunset.

Sometimes orange. Sometimes pink. Sometimes blue and even white. Every night it's different. It never gets old. There's no sense whatever that you can skip it because you've "been there done that".

Costa Rica

Maui

South Africa

San Diego

And the location doesn't have to be exotic. Even in Roosevelt, Minnesota, at the lodge where I worked we had rows of west-facing windows that overlooked gigantic Lake of the Woods. I'd stop running for a few moments to join our guests and watch the sun silently slip below the horizon.

Minnesota, 9:20pm

You know what though? I don't do sunsets in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's not even on my radar here. Perhaps because there are too many trees and buildings to block it? I don't know. But that stops now.

In my quest for post-vacation-similar-to-New-Year's-resolution-self-betterment, I vow this summer to make sunsets part of my day. I won't even have to go far. Here's the view right out of my apartment window: